1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a touchscreen controller, and more particularly to a touchscreen controller to be used for computer application programs wherein the touchscreen controller may be programmed to create custom layouts for the application programs.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer games have become increasingly popular in recent years as computer technology has advanced to provide realistic gaming environments. Many of these games implement keyboard macros to enable the user to control the particular game being played. In order to make the games more user friendly, and easier to learn, additional input devices dedicated to a particular game have been developed to enable the user to simply push a button in order to run the macro that would take two or three or more keyboard strokes to run. For example, a joystick and throttle combination may be used with a flight simulator to help eliminate keyboard inputs. Other input devices may be used to provide dedicated buttons for a game. These input devices are sometimes programmable and usually require different overlay cards depending on the game being played. Presently, these programmable input devices connect inline with the keyboard and allow the user to program the buttons on the device to represent a particular keyboard sequence associated with a command for a game. The overlay card then indicates to the user what particular function a particular button on the input device performs. The overlay card may be created in conjunction with the programming of the device and simply printed to allow the user to program the input device for any game requiring keyboard inputs.
One of the problems with current auxiliary input devices such as those described above is that a new overlay must be created for each game and the overlay must be removed and replaced with a new game when the user decides to play another game. Another problem is that the input device must be manually configured by the user to change between games. It would be desirable for the input device to be more easily adaptable and versatile for the various games or other applications on the computer. In particular, an improved input device would not require an overlay card which must be changed every time a new application is started. In addition, the improved device may be set up to automatically change its configuration whenever the active application being used on the PC is changed.
The present invention provides an improved auxiliary input device for use with various computer applications which is more versatile and easier to use than prior devices. A touchscreen device is used to provide easier inputs to the computer applications. The layout of the touchscreen display may be customized using layout software that maps visual indicators on the touchscreen to user-defined key sequences, mouse events, external calling of Dynamic Link Libraries, URL links, or other miscellaneous actions. Control software runs in the background for loading the saved layout configurations and executing the user-defined key sequences or mouse events whenever the touchscreen is touched by the user. The control software can be configured to automatically load layouts based on the active program or game being played. The touchscreen configuration for each game may be programmed with bitmaps and key sequences and then stored for later retrieval. In order to provide rapid retrieval of a configuration, the touchscreen device is connected to the system through the USB port rather than the keyboard port. Once a layout is loaded onto the touchscreen display, the input device senses pressure on the integral touchscreen. Whenever pressure is sensed, the touchscreen display sends a signal back to the computer through the USB port, and the computer microprocessor executes the key sequence or other command associated with the location on the touchscreen that was pressed. Each location or area on the touchscreen is mapped to an entry in the user-defined table created using the layout editor.